


Poison

by Sherctorrunning23



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angels, Jim's p.o.v, Johnlock (a bit), M/M, Reichenbach, Sheriarty - Freeform, Sherlock x Jim, Slight Smut, Teenlock, alternate season 2 ending, jimlock, pining jim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 02:11:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4986013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sherctorrunning23/pseuds/Sherctorrunning23
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The relationship between James Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes has been described in many ways.<br/>Insane. <br/>Unhealthy.<br/>Obsessive.<br/>Poisoned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poison

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sheriarty oneshot with mentioned Johnlock. Limited smut (barely any). Please comment and leave kudos! Thank you x

The first time Jim Moriarty lays eyes on Sherlock Holmes, he never imagines that he could fall in love with him.

All Jim sees is another lonely, angry, highly intelligent child who can be easily exploited, possibly manipulated and definitely ruined. All Jim sees is another asset, another teenager to do his bidding, do his business, do his dirty work. All Jim sees is another soul to break.

He approaches Sherlock himself, stopping in front of the younger boy and smiling his snake-smile, confident that the boy will begin shaking in his shoes. The child is new, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, with big blue eyes and wayward black curls, as innocent and fragile as any Jim has ever seen.

He is so, so confident that he can break him.

And he has been proven so, so wrong.

Jim leads the school, rules the school, runs the school. Most children avoid him, do what he says and pray that he leaves them alone; there are five or six, his inner circle, who help him keep it up, help him lead, help him organise.

These five or six are his friends, probably. They are of little importance, most nothing more than lackeys. Only Irene Adler, dominatrix, clever and brilliant, and Sebastian Moran matter to him in any way.

Ah, Sebby.

Sebby, who stays with him always. Sebby, who carries out anything Jim asked him. Sebby, the person he cares for most in the world.

No one compares to Sherlock, of course, but can you truly care for someone who you hate with all your heart?

There is something about Sherlock that, even when he is just a boy, Jim is attracted to. Maybe it’s the way he looks Jim straight in the eye, the way he smirks slightly when Jim mentions his ‘business,’ the way he flirts _back._

The way he isn’t scared.

Jim can’t remember what they said, all those years ago. He can barely remember what Sherlock’s answer was; did he agree straight away, or did he say he would think about it?

He can, of course, remember Sherlock’s lips by his ear as he whispers, _the game is on._

*

The first time Jim says Sherlock’s name when he and Sebby are having sex, the assassin lets it go. He assumes it’s a mistake, assumes it’s an accident, never imagines that Jim Moriarty dreams of a sixteen year old boy with a drug problem and mummy issues. Why would he? Jim would never do that. Never.

But then it happens again and again until Jim is never thinking about Sebby as he climaxes, instead Sherlock, beautiful Sherlock, brilliant Sherlock, broken Sherlock. At this point Jim still thinks it is just a sexual attraction; he wants to fuck him. That’s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Purely physical. And maybe it is purely physical, now. Maybe.

Jim doesn’t know how it gets out, who Sebby told that he is groaning the name of the little boy he uses as a messenger, a computer, to find out the weak points of his clients, but the next thing he knows Sherlock is standing in front of him, smirking infuriatingly, saying, ‘I hear you’re in love with me, Mr Moriarty.’

Jim isn’t been embarrassed because he had nothing to be embarrassed about; instead he smiles and says, ‘what’s it to you, darling?’

And Sherlock blushes, rosy red creeping up his pale-as-a-corpse neck and Jim knows immediately that Sherlock is inexperienced, Sherlock is nowhere near as confident as he appears and Sherlock is _innocent._

Of course, once he knows this, he has to have him.

When you take a boy with self-esteem issues who has never been touched, who’s constantly called a freak, who’s friendless and inexperienced and just wants to be loved...

It happens very quickly. Sherlock blushes, Jim realises that this is perfect, and the next thing he knows his lips are on Sherlock’s and a tingle rushs through his entire body, a tingle he has never experienced before, a tingle that both unnerves him and completes him entirely.

They are in an alleyway, near the Pond, where Connor Tonlow runs the drug side of Jim’s business. Sherlock has clearly just been there, his left arm slightly weak, his pupils still big enough that it was obvious he is coming down from a high but if anything that turns Jim on _more_ which is absurd, completely and utterly absurd but _so true_.

Sherlock has a dominant personality. It’s obvious, even when he is only sixteen years old. But right now, with Jim, he is as meek as a kitten, arms curled around the taller man’s neck, making the most delicious little noises-

And the next thing Jim knows he is coming in his pants like a fourteen year old school boy.

*

He doesn’t feel guilty about it; him and Sebby were never dating, never in a relationship. They were, _are_ just fuck buddies. Of course, Sherlock feels bad, because underneath his sociopathicness and anger and arrogance he has the possibility to become an angel.

Jim vows to himself that he will never let Sherlock become an angel. They would ruin him, corrupt him, take away everything that is great about him. Beat him to the ground, make fun of him for his talents instead of allowing them to flourish.

They meet up on the sly because neither of them want Sebby to find out. Sherlock genuinely feels bad, Jim suspects that his best man might try to kill the poor little teenager, or at the very least quit.

And Sebby is an asset, a genuine, complete asset. Without him, Jim would be nowhere.

Jim knows that everyone else knows. Irene found out almost immediately, teasing Jim because Sherlock was three years younger, barely more than a child, barely even legal. Jim smiles, taking it even as his eyes warn her to _stay away;_ Irene clearly has designs on Sherlock, has done ever since Jim first brought him in, first used him to deduce the possible clients. Sherlock is _Jim’s._ No one else could have him.

That was what Jim whispers as he fucks him into the mattress in the dingy motel he booked last minute because he _had_ to see Sherlock, _had_ to be near him because Sherlock is a necessity, like oxygen or water or food. When they are together, Jim can think properly. Two halves of the same whole, Sherlock and Jim, Jim and Sherlock.

Sherlock always looks so pretty against the sheets, sweating and gasping and shaking, legs wrapped around Jim’s waist as he begs him to come inside him and Jim always complies, because he would give Sherlock the world if he asked. Nothing is too much for Sherlock to ask for. Nothing.    

*

And then it’s all ruined.

The brother finds out. Jim doesn’t know who told him, who ratted on him, because it wasn’t Sherlock, it wasn’t him and it wasn’t Sebby. He goes on a rampage afterwards, killing almost a quarter of his workforce in a frenzy that Sebby jokingly compares to Stalin’s purges because he thinks it’s all over, that Jim’s forgotten about Sherlock and Mycroft and the anger and the betrayal when in fact it’s the complete opposite.

Mycroft comes to his flat, which he has kept hidden from the government for years. He ignores the assassins sprawled in the lounge, ignores the bomb parts littered in the corner (back then Jim was still constructing most of his plans and equipment at home) and speaks for less than a minute, perfectly composed until right at the end, when he walks past the assassins and bomb parts and spits that final sentence at him.

_You are evil, Jim Moriarty, and I will not sit back and allow you to poison my brother._

Even at twenty-eight years old, Mycroft Holmes is one of the most powerful men in Britain and Jim had been made aware of him years before. Obviously, he never assumed that it would be Mycroft who broke him, or that he would do it in the most humiliating, human way possible. He never assumed that the person who would finally break him would be an unfixable junky and his cold older brother. He never assumed that the love he felt for that same unfixable junky would twist into something that destroyed him, banished his emotions, made him forget about the work, made him fixate on _one_ person and _one_ feeling.

Anger towards Sherlock, anger towards Mycroft, anger towards everything. But mostly, anger towards _himself_ because although he hated Sherlock, hated him for leaving him, hated him with all his heart he also _loved_ him. He loved him more than anything and he always would, and he wanted Sherlock dead but the mere _thought_ of him dead made him hyperventilate.

In his saner moments, immediately after Sherlock left him, it occurs to Jim that maybe it isn’t Sherlock’s fault. He’s young, barely twenty-one, an addict who faces estrangement and probably regrets leaving Jim, now. If Jim had been given that choice, the choice between Sherlock and his family, what would he have chosen?

The sane moments soon stop.

Sherlock has left him and Sherlock must _pay._

The stupid thing was that originally he isn’t even that upset. He’s slightly relieved, in a way, because Sebby was getting restless and more and more people had found out and Jim knew that it made him seem weak if he was in a secret relationship. Sherlock had been his weak spot, and now Sherlock was gone.

But then he starts seeing Sherlock everywhere, hearing him everywhere, feeling him everywhere. Phantom hands on his arm, phantom flashes of dark hair, piercing eyes in his dreams, Sherlock gasping _James_ as he splutters awake.

And Jim hates it.

That is when he declares war on Sherlock Holmes. That is when he realises he would do anything to break Sherlock Holmes. That is when he realises that he iis in love, desperately in love, completely in love, never-endingly in love with Sherlock Holmes.

*

It’s ten long years before he sees Sherlock again. Ten years of building his business, killing his enemies, asserting himself as the top criminal mind in the world, feared by all, responsible for all. He calls himself the consulting criminal after hearing that Sherlock is the consulting detective, because he knows it will provoke him and annoy him and that’s all he wants. All that time he has one goal and one goals only, one impossible goal that he _must_ accomplish.

He _must_ break Sherlock Holmes, like Sherlock Holmes broke him.

So after ten years of planning, ten years of research, ten years thinking about the _perfect_ way to break Sherlock he decides.

It’s overly theatrical; he’s had people watching Sherlock for years, and when they report he’s finally got another flatmate after the disaster that was Victor Trevor (Jim shudders as he remembers the _stupid_ drug kid. He had been so relieved when he heard about the overdose; the rumours about him and Sherlock had made him feel physically sick) he’s curious. According to the people who Jim had following Sherlock, the younger man and Victor had been fucking but nothing else; the spies reported that neither Sherlock or this John Watson showed any signs of any sort of a relationship.

This makes Jim feel better. At least a little. The thought of anyone touching _his_ Sherlock…

But then he kidnaps John Watson and invites Sherlock to the pool and _sees_ them. Even with Sherlock taking up all of his sight and his brain and his being he can see it; the way their eyes stay fixed on each other, the way John stands just slightly in front of Sherlock as if protecting him, the way Sherlock constantly watches John, the way they hover, the secret looks, the worry in their eyes when they think one is in danger.

It enrages him. It enrages him that Sherlock cares for John like that, it enrages him that John watches Sherlock like that, it enrages him that Sherlock doesn’t stare at _him_ likes he’s the sun anymore; he stares at John like that, now.

He leaves as soon as he can, despite the uncontrollable urge to blow up John. Far better to do it slowly, watch Sherlock collapse and feel and writhe until he’s left with nothing, just a twisted and broken soul and a twisted and broken body.

The pool is a disaster. It is meant to be a way of Jim reintroducing himself to Sherlock, showing the younger man that he is still watching, after all this time, and that Sherlock should be afraid, so very afraid.

Instead, it just makes him angrier and angrier.

It isn’t the call from Irene, or the appearance of Sherlock far too early, or even being _grabbed_ by that _stupid little pet._

What truly makes him livid is the sight of Sherlock and John entwined, as he watches from the seats around the pool after he ‘leaves’. The sight of Sherlock’s arms around _another,_ his head pressed against _another,_ murmuring into the ear of _another._

The sight of Sherlock in love with _another._

That is what destroyed Jim entirely. That is what made him fixate on the end. That is what finally, _finally_ sends him too far.

That is when Jim decides that breaking Sherlock isn’t enough.

He is going to _burn_ him.

*

In the end, he’s glad he chose this method of burning Sherlock. Bringing his reputation crashing around him to the point where even his friends, the detective inspector who Mycroft cares for so (Jim decides he’s next) and his little police minions doubt him. Not Johnny though.

Johnny doesn’t sway.

Seeing Sherlock in court is as exhilarating as it is awful, as demeaning as it is brilliant and it makes Jim _hate_ himself, because even the sight of Sherlock standing there, glaring at him, makes him happy because for the first time in forever he has Sherlock’s _full and undivided attention._ Sherlock is watching _him,_ Sherlock is listening to _him,_ Sherlock is glaring at _him_ and it doesn’t even matter that there is only anger in those brilliant blue eyes, it doesn’t matter that there is just hatred staring back at him because the feeling is mutual. Jim hates Sherlock so, so much, hates Sherlock for choosing his family over him all those years ago, hates him for shacking up with Johnny, hates him for _leaving_ him, but he _loves_ him, in the same weird and twisted and fucked-up and brilliant way that Sherlock still loves him.

Because Sherlock is still the same broken boy who Jim fucked hard into the mattress in that dank little motel, and Jim is the same damaged psychopath that rocked Sherlock to sleep when his dog died.

So when it’s all over, when Jim’s destroyed his reputation and persuaded that stupid little journalist to publish the fake story and scared him and hurt him and turned everyone against him, he knows exactly what he’s going to say, what he’s going to do, to finally end it.

He makes his goodbyes. He has a final night with Sebby, informs his clients that he must leave and that Irene Adler and Sebastian Moran will be leading his network in his place, and waits.

It doesn’t take long. A few hours since Jim drove him through London, hoping that Sherlock would notice it was him and hoping that Sherlock would appreciate the irony; last time they had been in a cab together, Sherlock had ridden him on the back seat, making the most _brilliant_ mewling sounds, and this time they were arch-enemies and Jim was plotting to kill him.

He’s with Sebby when he gets the text, and Sebby stiffens even now, even after a decade because he, too, will never forgive Sherlock Holmes. Originally Sebby was thrilled that Jim was going to break Sherlock, but after ten years of obsession to the point of infatuation, anger that breaks and splinters and grows with each passing year Sebby has had enough.

**Come and play.**

**Bart’s hospital Rooftop.**

**SH**

Oh but it makes him laugh! Come and play. That was the Sherlock he fell in love with, the Sherlock he accepted into his business, the fourteen year old boy, a baby really, who flirted back, teased back, didn’t seem to care that Jim could murder him with a click of the fingers.

Jim doesn’t reply. He doesn’t need too.

He puts on his sunglasses, he says goodbye to Sebby, and he goes back to Sherlock Holmes.

*

And now they are here, the rooftop of a hospital, as the sun rises over London.

Jim expected it to feel momentous, amazing and ridiculous. Ten years of plotting, ten years of waiting, ten years of infatuation and now he’s here and he _doesn’t care._ In fact, it feels like closure after a long period of waiting.

It feels like an ending, relief, the sun after the longest and darkest winter night.

Jim can barely hear them talking, doesn’t know what he’s saying and he gets the feeling that Sherlock’s the same. The sight of Sherlock so close, so _there,_ seems to banish every single feeling of anger and hatred from Jim’s body.

Instead he feels tired, so very tired, and so very done.

All he wants is an ending. A goodbye. A finish to the story of their lives.

Jim has a plan, of course, and so does Sherlock, but he’s just so _done._ He’s told Sherlock that he needs to jump, told him about the snipers (Sebby himself is targeting Johnny) and Sherlock’s standing there, at the edge, ready to jump for the man he loves-

‘Stop.’

Jim can’t believe the words come out of his mouth. He can’t believe that he’s telling Sherlock to halt, after everything Sherlock’s done to him. Robbed him of a life, left him, fallen in love with someone else, broken him-

And suddenly it’s clear.

So, so clear.

Sherlock’s staring at him, so confused, and yet again Jim just sees a little boy, a teenager, addicted and scared and confronted with a horrible choice.

Jim closes his eyes.

‘Your brother,’ he says quietly, eyes fixed on Sherlock, who’s still frozen on the ledge, ‘once told me that I was poison, Sherlock. Poison to you.’

Sherlock closes his eyes and Jim feels a slight pang of satisfaction because Sherlock _does_ feel bad about it, Sherlock _does_ remember, but it doesn’t matter now because it’s almost over.

‘The thing is,’ Jim says softly, hand wandering to his pocket, ‘he got it the wrong way round.’

Sherlock stills doesn’t understand, Jim can see it in his face, his beautiful, hard face, and in that moment he even looks like an angel, a crime-fighting, hard, angry angel, just what society wants.

‘I didn’t break you, Sherlock, you broke me. I didn’t poison you, Sherlock, you poisoned me.’

And it’s true, he thinks. Sherlock made a psychopath feel, made a psychopath sense emotion, poisoned him in every single aspect of the word, infected him, made him _worse._ Sherlock destroyed him.

Sherlock poisoned Jim.

Jim pulls out the gun and Sherlock flinches backwards but Jim isn’t going to kill him because he knows that Sherlock would be much better living, now. He’s not the same boy that Jim fell in love with. He’s not an addicted, broken, shattered little boy with mummy issues, a reject of society, a demon like him. He’s no longer unwanted and unloved. Instead, he’s an angel, an angel with a harsh face and a law-abiding brain, an angel with _someone,_ an angel who helps people and loves people and is loved. An angel with a John, an angel with friends. He’s ruined, he’s corrupted, and he doesn’t even know it.

It’s ironic, Jim thinks, that the one person he thought would never ever fall for the ruse of the angels did.

It’s ironic, Jim thinks as he lifts the gun to his mouth, that it was an angel who broke him, in the end.

It’s ironic, Jim thinks as he pulls the trigger, that it’s not really the demons that break you.

It’s the angels.


End file.
